open source systems for libraries

Sorry for not posting this sooner, but because of a load of not-oss4lib tasks to accomplish before the end of the summer, this site will likely stay quiet at least until September 2007. Hope to be back soon.

Previously on OSS4LIB, it was mentioned that "A new and promising ILS is being developed and maintained by the Georgia Public Library Service for use by the Georgia Library PINES Program, a consortium of 249 public libraries.". Then there was an entry about the project being ahead of schedule, and another concerning a demo. What was never posted here is that Evergreen has been running live in production at PINES (which is now over 260 libraries) since September of 2006. There is a vibrant community growing around the software consisting of the PINES crew, volunteers, interested individuals, and even a handful of vendors. Evergreen has started to spread beyond Georgia, and most recently, Equinox Software and the King County Library System have teamed up to build a Proof-of-Concept Evergreen installation. Check out the press release.

WELLINGTON, NZ--Thursday, February 22, 2007- - LibLime, the leader in open-source solutions for libraries, has announced it will acquire the Koha Division of New Zealand-based Katipo Communications, Ltd.

Katipo Communications, Ltd. was commissioned by Horowhenua Library Trust in 1999 to write the original version of Koha--the first open-source ILS-- and has been supporting and promoting Koha since its release in early 2000. LibLime has been providing commercial support for Koha since early 2005. The acquisition will significantly strengthen LibLime's in-house development and support capacity, enabling the company to handle a growing demand for open-source automation solutions in the library market. LibLime also plans to actively expand its support offerings to the Australasia region.

The acquisition also highlights one of the unique features of an open-source business and development model: "Katipo's Koha customers don't need to worry about switching to a new ILS," explains Rachel Hamilton, Director of Katipo Communications. "With open source, switching vendors doesn't mean switching software. I'm confident that LibLime will provide our Koha libraries with the professional service they have come to expect." No vendor lock-in means that Koha users can choose what level of commercial support, if any, they require.

About LibLime

LibLime is the global leader in open-source solutions for libraries, with a mission to make open source accessible to libraries. Rather than sell software licenses for static, hard-to-customize software products, LibLime educates libraries about the benefits of open source, enabling them to make choices about how best to provide their communities and staff with better technology services. LibLime then facilitates implementation of open-source in libraries by providing outstanding development, customization, support and training solutions - solutions tailored to each library's needs. For more information, see http://liblime.com.

About Katipo Communications, Ltd.

Katipo Communications is based in Wellington, New Zealand, and is an established independent web development firm. Their multi-faceted team works closely together to provide products that are both visually appealing and technically sound. Katipo authored the original version of Koha in 1999 for Horowhenua Library Trust and has been supporting and promoting Koha since its release in early 2000.

About Koha

Since it was first put into production in early 2000, Koha has enabled new realities of open access, affordability, and free innovation for hundreds of small and medium-sized libraries around the world. Koha has lived up to its name, which means `Gift' in the Maori language of New Zealand. From the outset, many libraries understood the power of this gift. They downloaded it, they installed it, they changed it, and they contributed their solutions back to the library community.

Several companies around the world support Koha, providing libraries with a full array of services including installation, migration assistance, data integrity testing, staff training, software maintenance, support and customization. To learn more about what services are available visit:

As seen on oss4lib-discuss, Jeremy wrote: "We are pleased to announce the first public release of the LibraryFind metasearch software, developed by Oregon State University Libraries. LibraryFind is free software licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL). This first public release, version 0.7, has a number of advanced features, such as (but not limited to): 2-click user workflow (one click to find, one click to get), an integrated OpenURL resolver, a 2-tiered caching system to improve search response time, and a customizable user interface. As this is a pre-1.0 release, there are still a number of features, functions, and efficiencies we plan to add to the software. We encourage involvement from others in the library community who are interested in working on an open source metasearch product. More information on LibraryFind, including information on how to download and run the software, can be found at libraryfind.org."

I've been working on this project, and am excited to see it out there finally. There's a lot of good stuff in there already, and I'm sure that we'll be able to improve on it rapidly with many more eyeballs on it.

As seen at blyberg.net, John Blyberg wrote: "I finally got permission to go ahead with implementing what Iâ€™ve dubbed â€œThe SOPACâ€ here at AADL. That would be â€œcute-speakâ€ for Social OPAC. The SOPAC represents a slew of features that Iâ€™ve wanted to implement for quite some time now. Iâ€™m rather excited to see if library users will respond to these tools in an OPAC setting as much as Web 2.0 users have to commercial social networking sites. Iâ€™m fairly confident they will. ...So what is the SOPAC? Itâ€™s basically a set of social networking tools integrated into the AADL catalog. It gives users the ability to rate, review, comment-on, and tag items."

SOPAC presents as a set of drupal modules and ships under the GPLv2. Links for the files, along with other interesting packages John has released over the years, are available here.

From the story at Linux.com: "The open source movement and libraries have a lot in common, not the least of which is the belief in free and open access to ideas and information. Yet, until recently, libraries have been slow to switch to open source software. Libraries have highly specialized software needs because the library community has developed its own complex standards and protocols to facilitate things like interlibrary loan, meta data sharing, and federated searching. Until recently, lack of commercial support made implementing open source unfeasible for libraries without an IT staff. Also, open source alternatives weren't perceived as scalable or feature-rich enough to handle the complex needs of most libraries. Now, commercial support has facilitated new levels of collaboration between libraries through sponsored development."

From the press release: "LibLime, the leader in open-source solutions for libraries, announced today the launch of the Koha with Class Initiative, offering free hosted Koha systems to library school classrooms."

From freshmeat: "This is a significant release of Fedora that includes a complete repackaging as a proper Web application. A new installer application makes it easy to setup and run. It now uses Servlet Filters for authentication. The Fedora repository can also be configured to calculate and store checksums for content. The RDF-based Resource Index has been tuned for better performance. A new high-performing RDBMS-backed triplestore has been developed that can now be plugged into the RI."